NY Rep. D’Esposito wants ‘from the river to the sea’ chant officially condemned as antisemitic
Long Island GOP Rep. Anthony D’Esposito will introduce a resolution on Tuesday formally condemning the use of the slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” as antisemitic, according to a copy exclusively obtained by The Post.
D’Esposito, who represents the hotly contested Fourth Congressional District, will file the motion on the heels of a censure resolution against Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) earlier this month, which cited the “Squad” rep’s use of the phrase on social media.
“The widespread use of the chant calling for liberation ‘from the river to the sea’ is extremely troubling considering that it is a blatant call for the destruction of America’s greatest ally, Israel, as well as the Jewish people who reside there,” D’Esposito said in a statement.
“The fact that this antisemitic rallying cry is being freely proclaimed on the campuses of America’s colleges and universities demonstrates the troubling prevalence of antisemitic thought in our nation’s institutions of higher learning,” he added.
“Antisemites utilizing the ‘from the river to the sea’ chant are not concerned with building a lasting peace in the Middle East, but are instead preoccupied with seeing the eradication of Israel and the Jewish people,” the lawmaker went on.
“My resolution presents Congress with an opportunity to formally condemn those who advance antisemitism by using this chant. Anyone who calls for the eradication of Israel and the Jewish people must be resoundingly rejected.”
Tlaib was censured 234-188, with 22 Democrats voting in support of it and condemning the congresswoman’s use of the phrase to call for the eradication of Israel.
Brooklyn and Manhattan Democrat Rep. Dan Goldman later said he asked Tlaib why she had used the “hurtful antisemitic trope” and later defended it as “an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate.”
“I reached out to Representative Tlaib privately … to communicate to her the hurt and harm her words have caused and how they have been received by many in the Jewish community,” he said in a Nov. 8 statement posted to X. “I urged her to make a public clarification, but she refused.”
Goldman also blasted Tlaib for having “promoted misinformation that inflamed violence around the world, including against United States embassies” during Israel’s ongoing war with Hamas terrorists.
D’Esposito’s resolution denounces the phrase as “an antisemitic call to arms with the goal of the eradication of the State of Israel, which is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.”
It further cites the more than 1,200 victims, mostly civilians and including at least 33 American citizens, killed by Hamas jihadists on Oct. 7, as well as the nearly 240 people taken hostage back to the Gaza Strip.
Hamas invaded a music festival and massacred hundreds of attendees, raping and murdering women and beheading babies during the bloodbath — atrocities which are all mentioned in the resolution.
It points out the death toll marked the highest number of Jewish people murdered in a single day since the Holocaust.
D’Esposito’s motion also notes that “the chant seeks to deny Jewish people the right to self-determination” and has been used by other terrorist groups such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah.
Hamas’ 2017 charter calls for the “full and complete liberation of Palestine” by “resistance and jihad” by making use of the phrase as well — and the terror group’s politburo chief, Ghazi Hamad, has since promised the attack would not be their last.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi earlier this month invoked the phrase to call for the “establishment of the Palestinian state” as a rightful outcome of the war.
Former Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein also invoked “from the river to the sea” in earlier calls to “liberate” the Palestinian territories.
US demonstrators have also shouted the phrase during protests in major US cities, including an October event on Capitol Hill that Tlaib participated in.
“[S]tudents attending institutions of higher education have chanted and continue to chant this slogan since the barbarous October 7 massacres, yet all the while, their fellow Jewish students are being harassed and intimidated,” D’Esposito’s resolution also notes.
“[T]his chant has been used recently by violent protesters throughout the United States and the world,” it states.
The resolution is expected to receive bipartisan support and vote on the House floor before the end of the year, according to a source familiar with the matter.
